I grew up in Beijing, China, where I witnessed how political, social and economic trends—what I call “tides of the age”—impacted ordinary people’s lives. Before joining Forbes Asia in New York as a reporter and online producer, I interned here for two summers covering Chinese business news, and was a news assistant at The New York Times Beijing bureau for a summer. I'm interested in how politics impacts business in China, and U.S.-China investments. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter @Hengshao90. Email me at hshao[at]forbes.com.

Your Dream Job In China: $55K To Be The Contemporary Marco Polo

Update, May 20: Not too surprising, Liam Bates from Switzerland, quoted at the end of this post, was the winner of the Modern Marco Polo contest. Bates first visited China to learn Kung Fu at age 16 and currently works as a freelance producer for Chinese travel channels. His experience living with a tribe in a jungle in Indonesia for a month and on a boat off the Malaysian coast, where a nearby ship was raided by pirates, can perhaps speak to his spirit of adventures.

When Marco Polo travelled to Hangzhou, China 700 years ago, never had he thought he’d be creating a dream job of social media ambassador in 21st century China.

On May 20, one lucky foreigner will be selected to become the modern-day Marco Polo, get a free 15-day trip to the scenic city of Hangzhou in coastal China, and rewarded $55,000 in the next year for working part-time to promote the city to a global audience. Five finalists from Australia, Romania, U.S., Switzerland and France are in the final race. They came from a pool of 700 applicants from around the world, carefully screened by the Hangzhou Tourism Commission on their familiarity with China, social media presence and adventurous spirit.

Located about 100 miles southwest of Shanghai, Hangzhou is home to 9-millon population and among China’s richest cities as measured by per-capita GDP. In the past month, the city has been in the spotlight for early signs of property woes, a public protest against the city’s decision to build a waste incineration power plant, and as the hometown of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Traditionally, Hangzhou is known for its picturesque West Lake, a UNESCO world heritage site romanticized by Chinese folklores, and the Grand Canal, which winds from Hangzhou to Beijing and was a key route of transportation in ancient China. The city’s mild climate and charming environment drew 97 million tourists last year, contributing to 6.5% of the city’s GDP. Among those, however, only 3.16 million were international visitors, representing a 4.6% decline from the year before.

Westlake in Hangzhou, China (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In neighboring Shanghai, inbound tourism dipped 5.4% last year, consistent with an overall low tide that the country has experienced in recent years. The number of international visitors to China dropped 2.2% in 2012 and 3% in 2013, according to China Tourism Research Institute. Following waves of anti-Japanese sentiments and protests in China, the number of Japanese tourists to the country saw the sharpest decline of 23.8% in the first nine months of 2013.

Li Hong, the director of the Hangzhou Tourism Commission, says that besides “special situations associated with the neighboring regions,” the decline is also attributable to global economic conditions and then-rising values of the Chinese dollar.

The sweet deal of modern Marco Polo is the culmination of a broader, $1 million push by the Commission to reverse the negative trend and boost Hangzhou’s global profile. Over the course of 15 months, the Commission has launched four other campaigns on Facebook, TwitterTwitter, Pinterest and Youtube. Those include a “my Chinese name” submission by internationals, a home recipe contest, a traditional costume design platform and a China-related love-story sharing scheme, where the winner supposedly landed a full-page New York Times ad of her love story. And in case you’re curious, the Commission is not tweeting from a Chinese government office on VPN, skirting the Great Firewall of China. The accounts are in fact maintained by a public relations contractor based in Hong Kong.

Asserting that Hangzhou appeared in “one fifteenth of Marco Polo’s account of Chinese cities,” Li explains that the inspiration for a modern-Marco Polo came from consultation with western professionals in 2004 – though it was not until last year that the municipal government provided the resources to execute the plan.

“Marco Polo’s book is the most important work through which the west got to know China. He used words like ‘heaven city’ and ‘magnificent’ to describe Hangzhou.” says Li, who speaks surprisingly fluent English. “But Hangzhou is not a port city and is not well-known in the West. We believe activating the Marco Polo concept, finding a travel-zealot to be our spokesperson…would be a good approach to bringing Hangzhou to the world.”

Besides submitting standard essays of “why me,” applicants were asked to complete quizzes showcasing their familiarity with Hangzhou and the Chinese culture in the first round. Liam Bates, a Swiss freelance producer for Chinese travel channels and one of the five finalists, recalls one of the questions as, “which of these is a famous Hangzhou dish – Kung Pao Chicken, Mapo Tofu, or West Lake Longjing Tea Shrimp?” In the second round, which Bates says occurred almost a year later with little communication in the interim, the finalists were asked to submit videos of themselves and a detailed plan for Hangzhou’s promotion. (For the entertaining video with one epic impersonator of Marco Polo at the end, see below).

The lucky winner will embark on an all-expense-paid trip to Hangzhou, which, in addition to visits to touristy sites and tastings of gourmet food, will also include a four-day ride along the Grand Canal and three evenings spent at a local resident’s home. After that, the modern Marco Polo is free to live his/her own life as long as he meets certain promotion targets, such as earning 10,000 fans on Facebook and 1,000 on Twitter, or tweeting 15 posts a month about Hangzhou.

“It’s essentially a part-time job. How you work that out time-wise is your problem.” Bates, perhaps the strongest contestant because of his fluent Chinese, chuckles as he savors the prospect. “We will see how hard it is to meet these numbers.”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.